Where is the Heart?

The winter holiday gave me the chance to visit my home for the first time in ages. After being away for so long, it almost felt like visiting a new place. The truth is that I did not really want to go home. For the better part of the last twelve years I have enjoyed traveling to strange and wonderful and obscure parts of the globe. I have spent extended periods of time on four different continents, and have visited more countries than I can count. As I sat in Japan eyeing the calendar and the approaching holidays, my mind was set on venturing into some seldom visited corner of Asia. I wanted to spend my winter vacation laying my eyes on something new, rather than the familiarity of my little American home. Luckily, that all changed when I decided that a visit with my family was more important than another adventure.
It turned out that going home was an adventure in itself. I saw the South in a new light. It was, in fact, as if I saw something new. All the reasons I originally left home are too numerous to recall, but from a very young age I knew I needed to roam. I wanted to know what the great writers knew. The "Lost Generation" moved to Europe and Tolkien, Lewis and the rest of the "Inklings" invented strange and exotic places. I had seen the world through books, and it was too vast, and life too short to sit in one place and watch it pass me by. I felt certain that I would find greener pastures when I left our little field. This recent trip made me realize that the world is full of wonderful and beautiful and horrible and ugly places, but at the end of the day they are just that...places. Its not the mountains or the trees or the cafes or any other inanimate feature that makes a place great, but rather its the people that you meet. I have been blessed to meet some great people in my travels, and I was especially blessed to rediscover the greatness of my own people this holiday season. I forgot how much I loved the South, not because the winters are mild or the mountains old, but because Southerners are an interesting and unique people. They are kind and friendly, funny and caring, honest and convicted. The latter bothered me tremendously when I was younger, because my convictions often differed from those of mainstream Southerners, but I am growing to appreciate diversity. Age and guile are quickly replacing youth and the need to always be right. Home truly is a wonderful place, and for the first time in my life I miss it.
I would not trade my adventures for anything in the world. I consider myself lucky beyond measure to have seen the things I've seen and known the folks I've known, but as I pass into my next thirty years I feel drawn to spend them doing something new and exciting...letting the grass grow under my feet. Vacations are meant for traveling, but it sure will be nice to have a home to come back to when the trip is done.